In most European countries, it is customary to eat little and lightly on Christmas Eve, and to indulge on Christmas Day. For example, Austrians on Christmas Eve ate only cheese, milk soup, and dried fruits. And only after Christmas rituals did housewives bring out the best in the house: first, bachlkoch - watery flour porridge drizzled with butter and honey, then meat dishes (for example, strong broth mettesuppe), sausages, pork and beef with horseradish and sauerkraut.
In Polish and Bulgarian families, according to tradition, the New Year's table must have at least twelve dishes, and among them, imagine, not a single meat one. However, there is fish, mushroom soup or borscht, barley porridge with prunes, dumplings with butter, and chocolate cake for dessert.
The New Year's table in the Balkan countries is also not for lovers of fatty veal shank - it is cold dishes of potatoes, vegetables and legumes, turnips, donuts with cheese and nuts, baked pumpkins, pea soup. In short, if you are on a strict diet that you do not want to break even on New Year's Eve - you are welcome in the aforementioned countries.
And meat-eaters will enjoy New Year in Romania. Here you can order traditional Romanian New Year dishes: stuffed cabbage rolls in cabbage or grape leaves, roast tokana or drob - a dish of lamb offal. If you find yourself in Italy, you cannot fail to try the traditional New Year dish cotechino con lenticchie - a pork sausage with lentils. In addition, on the Italian family's New Year's table there are beans with honey, rice cooked in almond milk, and pasta with sardines in a walnut sauce. And for dessert you will be offered panettone (a type of Easter cake), torrone (nougat with raisins and nuts boiled in must) and pandjarro (fruitcake with raisins and candied fruits).
Away with diet if you are going to celebrate New Year in Western Europe. In England, turkey stuffed with bread, cheese, prunes, garlic, beans, mushrooms, apples, and cabbage will be especially tasty. And in Paris, the city of dreamers and lovers, at the New Year's table you can feel like a true bourgeois and taste blood sausages, roast goose or turkey.
One of the most unusual New Year dishes - lutefisk - you can try in Norway, Denmark and Finland. It is dried cod soaked until it becomes gelatinous. In addition, here they traditionally serve stuffed tongue or pig's head for Christmas.
If you decide to visit Japan for New Year, you will remember o-sechi - artistically arranged shrimp, sea bass slices, omelet rolls, and boiled vegetables in a special four-tiered lacquer box. Japanese housewives also serve beans in syrup, herring roe, sweet chestnuts with sweet potato puree for the New Year's table. The festive meal always ends with a cup of soba buckwheat noodles. And at the Chinese table, you will feel especially cozy, because China's main New Year dish - jiaozi - is as familiar to us as no other. Jiaozi are semi-circular dumplings with a filling of pork mixed with cabbage and onion.
Well, if you are no longer surprised by the East but really want exoticism, go celebrate New Year in Chukotka. The Chukchi also have their own festive dish, and it is called sivikteryn. It is walrus meat boiled over a fire with seaweed and kukunet - green willow leaves. And only here will you be offered the most original 'appetizer' in the world - the dish kitykit made from fish stroganina and seal meat, which increases appetite. We think that after such a New Year, your stomach will greet the native Olivier salad with even greater enthusiasm.